Face to face retail sales transactions take place at the point of sale or what is commonly referred to as the checkout line or counter. It is at this location that the customer pays for the goods purchased, typically by either cash, check, charge or debit card.
To effectuate the sale, many retailers presently use electronic devices to facilitate and provide a record of transactions. Such a point of sale system may include a scanner for reading coded product price, a terminal for manual entry of transaction information and storage of currency, and a printer which may be used to produce a documentary record or journal for the business and a printed receipt for the customer. Check processing devices are also available to facilitate the transaction when a check is used for payment. Such check processing devices may include a Magnetic Ink Character Recognition ("MICR") reader for reading coded account information printed with magnetic ink which is commonly found on the front of checks. Optical character readers may also be provided for reading information encoded on a check.
As part of the check out procedure, the sales price of each item purchased is entered into the point of sale terminal. When paying by check, the customer then provides a check for the amount due to the cashier. The cashier inserts the check into the check processing device which reads the coded information such as MICR information, for further processing such as confirming sufficient fund availability or checking the information against a bad account list. A receipt is then provided from the printer to the customer.
An example of an optical reader apparatus which may be used for reading data from a check is U.S. Pat. No. 5,345,090. This reader apparatus illuminates the document with two light sources oriented adjacent a data window which is aligned along an optical axis which includes a mirror and aperature positioned to receive reflected light from the document.
It is also known to use optical fiber elements as light piping to allow the light source to be displaced from the document to be illuminated as described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,584,779. U.S. Pat. No. 3,726,998 discusses an alternate approach to light piping using a flat plate light pipe rather than optical fiber elements. On the receive end for reflected light, U.S. Pat. No. 4,495,412 describes the use of an optical waveguide circuit in a glass substrate to route light from a scanned line to a transducer where the length of the scanned line exceeds that of the transducer.
These known approaches to optical readers have limitations, particularly in the relatively compact and dirty environment of point of sale systems. Point of sale systems are typically located at the checkout counter where space is limited. Accordingly, printer and reader components are often packaged together to provide both a reduced footprint and reduced document handling requirements for a user. In such an environment, an optical reader preferably would provide for alignment, light routing and protection from environmental dirt and debris in a compact package. Another limitation is the cost of known optical readers which is, typically, higher than desired as a large number of point of sale devices, such as printers, are often used, making it desirable to provide a low cost reader for MICR characters.